VIETNAM AND THE NEW LEFT ★^1009made by political elites, with no real public debate. In April 1965, SDS invited
opponents of American policy in Vietnam to assemble in Washington, D.C. The
turnout of 25,000 amazed the organizers, offering the first hint that the anti-
war movement would soon enjoy a mass constituency. At the next antiwar
rally, in November 1965, SDS leader Carl Ogelsby openly challenged the foun-
dations of Cold War thinking. He linked Vietnam to a critique of American
interventions in Guatemala and Iran, support for South African apartheid,
and Johnson’s dispatch of troops to the Dominican Republic, all rooted in
obsessive anticommunism. Some might feel, Ogelsby concluded, “that I sound
mighty anti- American. To these, I say: ‘Don’t blame me for that! Blame those
who mouthed my liberal values and broke my American heart.’” The speech,
observed one reporter, marked a “declaration of independence” for the New Left.
By 1967, young men were burning their draft cards or fleeing to Canada
to avoid fighting in what they considered an unjust war. In October of that
year, 100,000 antiwar protesters assembled at the Lincoln Memorial in Wash-
ington, D.C. Many marched across the Potomac River to the Pentagon, where
photographers captured them placing flowers in the rifle barrels of soldiers
guarding the nerve center of the American military.
The Counterculture
The New Left’s definition of freedom initially centered on participatory
democracy, a political concept. But as the 1960s progressed, young Americans’
understanding of freedom increasingly expanded to include cultural freedom
as well. Although many streams flowed into the generational rebellion known
as the counterculture, the youth revolt was inconceivable without the war’s
destruction of young Americans’ belief in authority. By the late 1960s, mil-
lions of young people openly rejected the values and behavior of their elders.
Their ranks included not only college students but also numerous young
workers, even though most unions strongly opposed antiwar demonstrations
and countercultural displays (a reaction that further separated young radi-
cals from former allies on the traditional left). For the first time in American
history, the flamboyant rejection of respectable norms in clothing, language,
sexual behavior, and drug use, previously confined to artists and bohemians,
became the basis of a mass movement. Its rallying cry was “liberation.”
Here was John Winthrop’s nightmare of three centuries earlier come to
pass— a massive redefinition of freedom as a rejection of all authority. “Your
sons and your daughters are beyond your command,” Bob Dylan’s song “The
Times They Are A- Changin’” bluntly informed mainstream America. To be
sure, the counterculture in some ways represented not rebellion but the ful-
fillment of the consumer marketplace. It extended into every realm of life the
How did the Vietnam War transform American politics and culture?